


hold on / hold out

by Anonymous



Category: A3! (Video Game)
Genre: F/M, very brief mentions of tsukkazu
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-23
Updated: 2018-03-23
Packaged: 2019-04-06 23:17:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,398
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14067741
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: for jun, who is the most amazing





	hold on / hold out

**Author's Note:**

> for jun, who is the most amazing

Desperate times call for desperate measures. Sakyo is by no means desperate, but it's always good to be prepared, and this is the sole reason he is currently standing outside the door to Room 202 with a box of tissues and a ten-minute introductory speech on the topic of slow-burn romance.

Kazunari flings the door open and hits him on the nose. “Furuuche! You’re early!”

“It’s common courtesy to show up ten minutes early to an appointment,” grumbles Sakyo, ducking out of the oncoming hug and peering into the room. He wrinkles his nose at the uneven stacks of paper scattered across the floor. “Miyoshi, have you forgotten that I’ll be holding room inspections tomorrow?”

It’s a rhetorical question; club meetings are held once a month, and room inspections every fortnight, and every time they couple together they seem to coincide with the due date for one of Kazunari’s major projects, too. Personally, Sakyo feels that if Kazunari honed his organisation skills a bit more, he could achieve both a clean room and spotless grades. Sakyo himself has a minimalist room, in spite of Azuma’s numerous attempts to ‘spruce it up a little, just to bring it a bit of life’. Sakyo has had quite enough of the smell of curry and feminine shampoos. Azuma’s suggestions that these completely random scents will help Sakyo to ‘embrace his inner sentimentality’ are unsolicited and completely unreasonable.

Muku perks up when he sees Sakyo. He’s already half-buried in a dozen volumes of _Kiss Kiss HEART Magic_ , the gripping tale of a girl who dreams of marrying a tall blonde man in glasses – and wakes up to find the man of her dreams sleeping on the floor at her feet. Sakyo approves of the premise, although he feels long brown hair might suit the heroine better. “Since you’re here, we can start early!” he exclaims, his eyes shining at the thought of being able to discuss the books at more length than usual. “The development in the newest volume of _Curry Me Home!_ was amazing, wasn’t it?”

“It was very well executed,” Sakyo agrees. He had gotten misty-eyed at page fourteen upon seeing the double-page spread of Prince Darsakyo reaching out to take the heroine’s hand at last. “May I open the meeting?”

“Of course, of course!” Kazunari holds up his phone. “Your speech looks super cool?! Can I post it to Insta?”

Sakyo snatches his paper back. “Oi, don’t look at people’s things without their permission. And you’d better not be leaking any personal information there. You young people like to publish your whole lives on Tweeter and Fakebook, but the Internet is a dangerous place…In the first place, you’re too careless with your property in general. You need to – ”

“Okay, okay, tell us about that later!” Waving off Sakyo’s incoming lecture, Kazunari bounds over next to Muku and sits there with legs tucked under, looking attentive. “Speech! Speech! Speech!” He claps as he cheers, loud as ever in the otherwise quiet room.

Sakyo sighs. He doesn’t remember ever being this noisy. Children these days seem like a whole other species to him; he can’t imagine how he’d handle children of his own. Not that he has time for that right now, busy as he is with the theatre, but someday, with the right person, perhaps…

He swallows hard, shaking the thought from his mind. A year ago, he wouldn’t have dared imagine a future like that for himself. That he can now, even for the briefest of moments, is thanks to Izumi.

Everything in his life comes back to her in the end. Unbidden, his lips quirk up in a smile – he recalls her concentrated expression as she directs their practice, her spinning around the kitchen with her ladle and a huge pot of curry-in-the-making. Unfortunately, thinking about Izumi also means thinking about his current – dilemma, of sorts – and the reason he’d asked to push their monthly meeting forwards. There’s no way he’s outing himself to Kazunari of all people, but this meeting provides the perfect cover for his investigation.

At the end of his speech, he pauses, scanning for a response. Both Muku and Kazunari are watching him with shining eyes, which means that he should obtain some good information from the ensuing discussion. Then Kazunari lets out a high-pitched burble that sounds a little like includes some variant of ‘ _aw man!’_ or possibly ‘ _amazing-a-ling awesome!’_. Sakyo doesn’t understand half the words that come out of Kazunari’s mouth on a normal day. “The Director’s something else!” Kazunari exclaims. “That’s a flag, Furuuche! You’ve got this in the bag!”

This sounds terrifying. “What does the Director have to do with this?” asks Sakyo, rather put out. “I was merely talking about a movie I watched the other day.”

“Yeah, me and Tsuzurun saw you guys at the cinema while we were on our way back from the hotel,” Kazunari says. “See? I even took a photo! You guys are adorbs~.”

“Wow!” Muku leans in close to the phone, as if the proximity will do something other than turn him prematurely blind. “The Director looks really pretty! And you’re both blushing, Sakyo-san! This is just like page 72 of volume 7 of _Secret Hidden Pepper-Hot Crush_ _♡_ !”

Sakyo fights the urge to grab Kazunari’s phone and throw it against the nearest wall. “Don’t take pictures of people without their permission,” he growls instead, trying to remember whether _Secret Hidden Pepper-Hot Crush_ _♡_  had a happy ending. He gets the vague feeling he’s been told something else rather extraordinary, but he can’t figure out what, and he has more important things to worry about. “Anyway, I was asking for your opinion, not a stalker’s report on my recent activities.”

“I think you should go for it!” Muku says immediately. “If nobody in these books mustered up the courage to confess, none of the couples would have had a happy ending!”

“Nice line, Mukkun! Fight-o, Furuuche! When you guys are official we can go on a double date?!”

“We’ll do as much as we can to support you, Sakyo-san!”

Sakyo is beginning to think that he went to the wrong room for advice. Then again, going to Azuma would have been even worse; he’d likely have woken up in an unfamiliar bed with a budding headache and no memory of the night before. Also, the kids have a point. The journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step, in the words of the wise. He’d like to think he’s not the same person who chose to lurk in the shadows while the dreams of his youth shrank away before his eyes. Meeting Izumi again has given him the strength to change.

He doesn’t want to miss any more opportunities.

 

*

 

“Sakyo-san? What did you want to see me for?”

His fingers long for the feel of air rolling under them, the sharp pop of bubbles breaking one after the other. Maybe then his heart would stop filling his chest to the point he’s stuck for breath; maybe then he’d have the words to say what he’s wanted to say for many years now.

“Izumi,” he says – it’s all that he can manage, but it’s the same word that made her turn to him in the cinema with her eyes wide and her blush visible even under the dim overflow of light from the screen. It’s the same word that made her shift in position just enough to brush her hand up against his, too deliberate to be an accident, and leave it there even when Sakyo lacked the presence of mind to do anything but leave his fingers trembling there.

He wonders how many times he’ll be saved by her pulling him on while he cowers away in the darkness. She’s always been the one to reach out to him first, but that’s never been the end he imagined for them. What he dreamed of as a child – what he has always wanted – is to walk by her side.

This time, he’s the one to hold out his hand. The speech he ends up giving is nothing like the performance he’d practised over and over in his mind, but it makes her smile, and laugh, and cover her eyes to hide her tears. Sakyo’s own vision is blurring too, but he can feel her squeeze his hand back in answer, and that’s enough.


End file.
